Beijing has no shortage of issues to confront. There's the South China Sea, uncontrollable corruption, a slowing economy and factional disputes within the party and military. But Chinese officials also face one of the most difficult challenges in modern statecraft: how to conquer a myth. Despite China's attempts to dislodge its mythic appeal, Tibet as Shangri-La seems firmly set in the world's imagination. The once-independent nation, set high on a broad plateau adjacent to the Himalayas, is a worldwide symbol of mystery, aspiration, spirituality and possibility.

In regards to your story of March 6 (Part I), concerning the rioting in Tibet, March 17 marked the 30th anniversary of the flight of the Dalai Lama from Tibet. Though the Chinese announced in 1949 that Tibet was part of China and subsequently invaded in 1951, it was not until March of 1959 that the Dalai Lama and his retinue fled Tibet. Rioting was extensive in February and March of 1959. It was brutally suppressed by the Chinese army. The Tibetan people are resentful for the 30 year absence of their spiritual and temporal leader.

At a time when museums seem to be torn between blockbusters and specialized scholarship, it's refreshing to come across "In the Land of Snow: Buddhist Art of the Himalayas" at the Norton Simon Museum, a no-nonsense exhibition that spares the bells and whistles to make a strong case for the virtues of amateurism. Not that long ago, before America was a nation of over-professionalized experts, pretension was something to be made fun of and it was OK to be an amateur. The word's Latin root is "lover.

The Times states that it is "diplomatically correct . . . that Tibet is a part of China" ("Tibet: What's Going On?" Editorial, Oct. 23). This is only true insofar as the United States now refuses to recognize Tibet as a sovereign nation. In fact, Tibet and China have, for centuries, experienced every possible diplomatic configuration. Tibet actually conquered China at one point in history. It is extremely unfortunate that the larger nations of the world, as well as the press, now repeat the politically convenient statement that Tibet is and was a part of China.

Thousands of Tibetans marched through New Delhi and New York, shouting slogans and waving flags in protest against China's actions in Tibet, at the start of the one-year countdown to the Beijing Olympics. In India, about 10,000 Tibetans, including maroon-robed Buddhist monks and women in traditional costumes, asked China to prove that it was upholding the rights of people living in Tibet. In New York, about 1,000 protesters marched in Manhattan to the Chinese Consulate.

Police occupied Tibet's most sacred temple and paramilitary troops were flown in from Beijing in a crackdown stemming from rare anti-Chinese riots led by Buddhist monks, local sources said today. Security forces with bayonet rifles enforced an indefinite night curfew clamped on the Tibetan capital amid rumors that another protest was being planned for Wednesday, the anniversary of the 1950 Chinese invasion of Tibet.

More than 1,000 protesters detained during anti-government riots in the Chinese region of Tibet three months ago have not been accounted for, a human rights group said. Amnesty International said a quarter of about 4,000 people detained by Chinese police during the riots in March are unaccounted for. The others have either been released or placed under formal arrest. "There is very little information coming out of Tibet, but the information we have paints a dire picture of arbitrary detentions and abuse of detainees," said Amnesty's Asia-Pacific director, Sam Zarifi.

Re "Dalai Lama says he may quit," March 19 The Times mentions a quote, "If the world doesn't speak up, it will be another Burma." Tibet has been "another Burma" for a long time already. Tibet's chosen future leader, the Panchen Lama, is imprisoned. The current leader, the Dalai Lama, is in exile. Homes and places of worship or cultural importance have been destroyed or desecrated, and Tibetans have been killed, imprisoned, abducted or exiled for decades. Fifty years of brutal occupation by the Chinese has resulted in systematic cultural genocide.

The oldest fossil of a previously unknown ancient leopard species, found in Tibet, is shaking the pantherine evolutionary tree, suggesting that big cats arose in Asia, not Africa, according to a new study. During a 2010 expedition to Tibet, paleontologists led by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles and USC discovered a large portion of skull and several intact teeth that they now attribute to a previously undescribed sister species to the modern snow leopard. In all, they collected seven specimens from three individuals, and dated them to 4.1 to 5.9 million years ago - dialing back the clock on big cat evolution by as much as 2 million years, according to the paper, published online Tuesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Panthera blytheae , named for the daughter of longtime museum benefactors Paul and Heather Haaga of La Cañada Flintridge, was slightly smaller than the snow leopard and probably roamed the Tibetan plateau for several million years, dining on antelope, pika and blue sheep, according to paleontologist Zhijie Jack Tseng, lead author of the paper.

The leader of the Tibetan government in exile is in Los Angeles this week, and although his administration is not officially recognized by the U.S. or any other regime, Tibetans living here have done their best to mark his visit with all the pomp afforded a visiting head of state. On Sunday, they greeted him at Los Angeles International Airport with white scarves and flowers. Later, a line of shiny black cars, each festooned with a Tibetan flag, ferried him to a reception at a nearby church.

XINING, China -- The U.S. ambassador to China, Gary Locke, paid a rare visit to Tibet this week as human rights advocates blasted the Chinese government's policy of luring Tibetan nomads into concrete housing projects with little job opportunities. In meetings with residents and officials, Locke stressed the need to preserve Tibetan culture and urged authorities to allow foreigners to travel more freely in the tightly controlled region, according to the Associated Press. The Tibetan Autonomous Region, as it is known, has been mostly closed to western diplomats and journalists since an uprising in 2008 against Chinese rule.

Filmmakers doing business in China are often advised to avoid the three Ts, as in Taiwan, Tibet and Tiananmen Square. But that warning doesn't apply if you happen to be Jeffrey Katzenberg, the animation mogul who has been at the forefront of Hollywood's push into China. The chief executive of DreamWorks Animation was in Beijing on Friday to attend a news conference announcing a China film project called "Tibet Code," an adventure movie based on a popular Chinese book series set in ninth-century Tibet.

BEIJING - Present your business card with two hands. Go ahead and slurp your soup. Give gifts to clients, but by all means avoid clocks and knives. These are among the cultural hints and etiquette tips that California's new China Trade and Investment Office offered to dozens of political and business delegates traveling here with Gov. Jerry Brown this week. The group arrived Monday, ahead of Brown, who was celebrating his 75th birthday. The trade office will open officially later this week, when Brown and his entourage travel to Shanghai for the official ribbon cutting.

Phil Zimmerman's article "Caught Up in Yunnan" [Oct. 28] talked about how he visited Yunnan province because he couldn't get into Tibet. True, Yunnan is heavily populated by ethnic Tibetans and the Chinese government decreed one county as the official Shangri-La, complete with a re-created Tibetan village, leading the author to conclude with, "Maybe I didn't need to visit Tibet after all," which seems like sour grapes. Having been fortunate enough to have been one of the last foreigners to visit Tibet in June, I can say the author missed an exciting and unique experience.

1. Poland, a major food exporter, removed from the market half a million pounds of food, including pickles and bread, because of fears it contained industrial salt, used for de-icing roads. 2. A performance this month of North Korea's Unhasu Orchestra in Paris, arranged by the principal conductor of the Seoul Philharmonic, may signal a slight thaw in relations with the West. 3. Five men were flogged six times each in the Aceh province of Indonesia after their conviction on gambling charges.

Rain, landslides and severed communications hampered rescue efforts Monday hours after a magnitude 6.8 earthquake hit northeastern India, Nepal and Tibet, killing at least 40 people and injuring hundreds. With many roads to the epicenter area in India's northeastern Sikkim state cut off, experts said they expected the death toll to rise once emergency workers reach isolated communities in coming hours and days. Working in the Himalayan state's favor is its relatively few residents, about 500,000, making it India's least populated.